Previous Years' Course Catalogues

This course seeks to reinforce and expand the musical capability of pastoral leaders in enlivening worship. This course will delve into the liturgical practice of song leadership surrounding the genre of global hymnody and contemporary worship songs. Broader concerns on theological implications and liturgical context of these materials will be explored.

This course seeks to reinforce and expand the musical capability of pastoral leaders in enlivening worship. This course will delve into the liturgical practice of song leadership surrounding the genre of global hymnody and contemporary worship songs. Broader concerns on theological implications and liturgical context of these materials will be explored.

This course seeks to reinforce and expand the musical capability of pastoral leaders in enlivening worship. This course will delve into the liturgical practice of song leadership surrounding the genre of global hymnody and contemporary worship songs. Broader concerns on theological implications and liturgical context of these materials will be explored.

What shapes the imagination and what grounds it? This course explores the significant questions of spirituality in a post-Modern world by situating those questions first in a reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet. These include the nature of identity; the quest for meaning; the basis of ethical decisions, the issue of creativity, and relationships with "otherness." The course offers a reading of reality based on Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) Coleridge's definition of imagination. He writes, "The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idea!ise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as an objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead (Biographia Literaria, ch. 13). We live in imagined world as if they are real, and so the ways in which the imagination is constructed, and depicted in literature offers us ways of engaging and thus of recognizing ourselves within maps of the spiritual worlds of those texts.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

This course is geared to enrolment in the Artists' Workshop of the Institute for Christian Studies' ART in Orvieto offerings in Orvieto, Italy. It aims to integrate, through the writing of a major paper, the practical experience gained in these arts workshops with the more theoretical knowledge obtained through academic courses in the area of art, religion and theology. Building upon the activities undertaken in the workshop (discussion, visual journals, presentation of work and feedback) as well as the arts project accomplished, the paper will serve as a summative statement of what the student learned. It should demonstrate the student's analytical and interpretive skills as it seeks to find the points of intersection between artistic practice and the life of faith.

This course is geared to enrolment in the Artists' Workshop of the Institute for Christian Studies' ART in Orvieto offerings in Orvieto, Italy. It aims to integrate, through the writing of a major paper, the practical experience gained in these arts workshops with the more theoretical knowledge obtained through academic courses in the area of art, religion and theology. Building upon the activities undertaken in the workshop (discussion, visual journals, presentation of work and feedback) as well as the arts project accomplished, the paper will serve as a summative statement of what the student learned. It should demonstrate the student's analytical and interpretive skills as it seeks to find the points of intersection between artistic practice and the life of faith.